


breath (and all the ways of holding)

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Background Relationships, Bisexuality, Canonical Character Death, Childbirth, Cunnilingus, F/F, Hardened Leliana, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pregnancy, Restraints, Sex Magic, Size Kink, Tentacles, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:02:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17680469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Leliana and Morrigan have never been good at talking, but ten years might be time enough to learn.(Or: two women falling in love, falling apart, and coming back together again.)





	1. Hard Truths

**Author's Note:**

> I read a lot and sometimes I love specific headcanons so much that I end up borrowing them for my own. I include references when I remember, but if you spot something that needs credit, please let me know! 
> 
> This fic also includes poor relationship communication. I adore this ship but fully admit that they are not always healthy or communicative.
> 
> The background relationships include Alistair/Morrigan for the Dark Ritual, and a mention of F!Tabris/Sten. Fair warning if that's not your cuppa. Fisting is also mentioned. It's not depicted on screen, but fair warning if you'd rather avoid it entirely.
> 
> Many thanks to [Stonestrewn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonestrewn) for the kind and patient betaing. This fic would have been twice as long and only half as good without you.
> 
> Any flaws or research fails are entirely my own. Critique welcome.

We are who we love, and Leliana loves difficult women.

It had happened like this: Leliana sat across from Morrigan, at the fire. They had talked. They had laughed. Leliana had brushed the hair from Morrigan’s shoulder and offered her a shopping trip, for better days and brighter futures. Morrigan had scoffed to cover for feeling flattered, and Leliana had told her that dressing could be a type of lovemaking, an intimacy of measurements and stroking a beloved form. Morrigan had laughed, and Leliana had laughed as well, but started showing her measurements without tape or needles, using the spread of her hands and the length of her fingers…

It was a cheat, of course.

Leliana knew that Morrigan would bristle if jostled by a stranger in the market, but if Leliana were to brush her hair or stroke her neck, then—oh. Morrigan would scowl, would huff, would insist “if you _must_ ,” but she would melt into it too. The body is her first language, above all her words.

So it was inevitable, as many things are.

So now Leliana carves her teeth in the curve of Morrigan’s shoulder, twists her hand into the knot of Morrigan’s hair. Pulls taut and savors Morrigan’s gasp as Leliana kisses her, bruising flesh with lips as she grinds her palm against Morrigan’s wet heat, slips a finger down Morrigan’s folds. Morrigan cants her hips, thighs spread in welcome, but Leliana slides away from Morrigan’s opening with a low chuckle.

Morrigan swears a blistering string of profanity. Then she groans, gripping Leliana’s ear and pinching so her thumbnail slices skin. “I _want_ —” she gasps.

“What do you want?” Leliana challenges, her palm slick against Morrigan’s body, her thumb twined in the dark curls of Morrigan’s pubis.

“I want you to make me _come_.”

Leliana kisses her mouth, lips mashed against teeth, and swallows Morrigan’s screams as she rubs Morrigan to hungry climax.

Afterwards, Leliana curls up with her back to Morrigan, head under Morrigan’s chin, on her side, fetal—warm against Morrigan’s belly. Marjolaine had held her like this, before. So did her mother. Past teaches present, reaching out with long fingers.

The body is a journal, and Leliana returns to familiar passages.

. . .

Morrigan’s heart is a series of locks—and Leliana knows the dangers of forcing an unwanted opening. Intimacy cannot be forced, and Morrigan hoards her secrets.

Leliana keeps her own secrets under her tongue, her pillow, carved in the space between ribs. It is better to focus on connection without trivialities or the discreet surveillance of minutia. Their conversations are never the banal “what did you have for lunch?” or “lovely weather,” commentary that serves as protective camouflage in Orlais. They travel in one another’s shadow, eat from one another’s pockets, and spend so little time apart that they must instead be conscious of their closeness.

So instead, Morrigan asks, “What does it mean, to love a god?”

“To have faith in someone greater than oneself. To know one to be small and insignificant yet worthy of love anyway,” Leliana responds, the words humming up her throat like a hymn. This is a self-taught truth, rather than official Chant.

“Your Maker was not so free with his love though, now was he?” Morrigan’s eyes are sharp, piercing.

Leliana has to swallow before answering.

“I think—as much as He loved us, it is difficult to love in the abstract. It is easier to love in specifics, to find what is universal from our particulars.”

“So what are your particulars?”

“The shape of your mouth and the line of your jaw,” Leliana says lightly.

Morrigan snorts. “You are a fool for a pretty face.”

“Perhaps my love is selfish, then.”

“Perhaps _all_ love is selfish,” Morrigan counters. “What does that say about your Maker then?”

Leliana hesitates, chewing the inside of her cheek as Morrigan pulls their potatoes from the coals. Morrigan puts them in a twist of cloth, juggling them back and forth between her hands before setting them aside to cool.

“I think love can be selfish, and still be true,” Leliana says, finally.

Morrigan kisses her then, on the jaw, on the chin, on the corner of Leliana’s mouth before claiming her with a crush of teeth and lips. They spin together like gravity, an inevitable pull into the privacy of Morrigan’s tent. Leliana has one bare moment to remember the potatoes so the dog won’t steal them.

Once in, Morrigan consumes Leliana like a hunger. She undoes her in savage pieces, yanking loose leather and buckles so they hit the ground in _whumps_ of impact. Morrigan kicks them aside as she pushes Leliana onto the bedroll, then wrinkles her nose at Leliana’s boots, so Leliana undoes them herself before kicking them off, and Morrigan sits astride Leliana’s hips. Her hands press into Leliana’s shoulders, bearing down, nails prickling meat and muscle. When Leliana tries to return the favor, to slide her hand up Morrigan’s belly and remove her layers, Morrigan slaps her hand away.

“Show me what it means to love a god,” Morrigan says. She licks her teeth, smiling with tender challenge. She knows what it means to be selfish.

Leliana breathes in, out. Potatoes are a poor substitute for incense, but if she closes her eyes, the rosemary might just do.

“It’s not about weakness, but submission.” Leliana opens her eyes, burrows her head into the pillow as she gazes up at Morrigan. “To choose, knowingly.”

“What is submission without weakness?”

Leliana smiles. “There are many ways to submit.” She dares raise her hand to stroke Morrigan’s cheek, to brush her thumb through the softs wisps of hair that curl before her ear, to caress the line of her jaw. “There is lovingly, joyfully. There is playful resistance. There is the mouth dripping gratitude to serve. They are all choices, every time. Based on trust. Intimacy. Strength, not weakness.”

“And if I were to bind you, to tie your wrists and pin your legs?”

Leliana tilts her head, considering. “I would trust you to let me go.”

“And if I were to push you to the brink of climax, to teeter you on the edge before letting you fall?”

Leliana considers again. Morrigan deserves the weight of full consideration, to see her wishes obeyed mindfully rather than slavishly. “I would trust you to let me come. Eventually.”

“And if you were to say no?”

“I would trust you to listen.”

"How strange, that you trust so much," Morrigan murmurs, her thumb on the pulse of Leliana's wrist. She presses, hard on the small bones of the hand, then withdraws as a flicker of force magic is left in its place. The magic tingles, cool and fluid. It pulses like water against glass, wrapping in firm shackles that pin Leliana to the bedroll.

Leliana arches her back, rocking against the restraints with a chuckle. "If you wished me harm, you could have done so without seduction."

"But not, perhaps, more cruelly." Morrigan walks her fingers down Leliana's chest, then sternum, and over the soft swell of belly and the divot of hips. She licks her thumb, tongue pink against the white of her nail, then presses it just above Leliana's clit, pushing into the fleshy mound of the pubis. "I do not claim to understand you, god-botherer. But we can share bodies without understanding."

Leliana presses her feet flat, lifting her hips in an attempt to grind against Morrigan, but is stymied by her shackles. "I no longer claim to understand _anyone_ , Morrigan. Least of all you." She allows herself to fall, sinking back into the bedroll. "I need not understand in order to accept."

Morrigan chuckles at that, a startled flutter of sound before she leans between Leliana's legs, licking the inner thigh and nibbling. It's champagne-sweet and ticklish, her mouth and lips a roving suction of warmth before Morrigan scrapes her teeth along Leliana's skin, biting hard enough to elicit a gasp.

"Too much?" Morrigan asks, glancing to Leliana's face.

Leliana hisses between her teeth, gathering breath. "No, but—I like more sweet with my bitter."

"Pleasure with your pain?" Morrigan's thumb trails lower, directly on Leliana's clit. The pressure is almost too much now, moving in lazy circles that never quite drift aside.

Leliana moans, long and low, her breath coming out in undignified huffs as Morrigan sucks tender circles along her inner thighs. Her skin feels bruise-tender and swollen, but she's unable to either squirm more fully into Morrigan's hand or more freely away from Morrigan's mouth. The pleasure comes almost in spite of herself, a deep roll of heat in her belly and her cunt aching with empty need. Her own arousal smears between her thighs, dripping down her cleft. Leliana bites her tongue and holds her breath, letting it burn her lungs and fill her limbs with tension, trembling—

And Morrigan stops, pulling back her hand and examining her splayed fingers with theatrical precision.

Leliana kicks, an ineffective thrash of feet and blankets. " _Now_ you are cruel! Let me come!"

"Beg for it," Morrigan teases, licking her thumb.

"Please!"

Morrigan swirls her tongue down the joint, then dots the tip of her finger. "You are too easy, Leliana. There is no reward for _easy_."

"So we should all be difficult then?" Leliana pants.

"We should all be worth some effort," Morrigan retorts. She slicks her fingers down Leliana's folds, curling one finger into Leliana with a shallow thrust. Leliana clenches her knees together, attempting to trap Morrigan's hand, but Morrigan withdraws and instead returns to lazy circles around Leliana's clit. She moves faster, picking up speed, and Leliana lets out a litany of "please, please, please," surely no more sacred and no less profane than the Chant that moves her, giving breath to prayer and yearning, because her words go faster, faster, tumble from her mouth like precious stones, and surely now that she is close, Morrigan will—

Stop again, laughing at Leliana's frustrated groan. Leliana strains, wrists sore, arms aching, body taut. Still aiming for that bright spot of pleasure.

"I could be far more cruel, if you preferred," Morrigan says lightly. She curls her finger against her thumb, releasing with a hard flick on Leliana's thigh. Leliana hisses at the sting, crossing her ankles and angling away from the blow. "I could do _that_ on your precious clit."

"No," Leliana gasps, even as the heat rushes between her legs. Her thighs are wet and sticky, her clit aches—and at this point, even cruelty would be a touch, which would be better than nothing at all.

"Your body betrays your words," Morrigan says. She leans against Leliana, one hand on her knee and the other releasing a series of savage flicks. Hard, a perfect line of impact. Three in a row, four, five. It is not so intolerable, not so painful that Leliana cannot bear it, but to think of that on her most sensitive place...

"But I will choose to trust your words," Morrigan continues, hand turned to pinching. She pulls the tiniest sliver of skin, nails pricking flesh, sharp and precise enough to make Leliana hiss, to pull her thoughts away from her thwarted orgasm and towards this new pain. Leliana never fancied herself a masochist, has never found pleasure in pain alone, but there is something to the warmth of Morrigan's body against hers, the way Morrigan's eyes dance as Leliana writhes. Leliana may not enjoy pain, but she enjoys Morrigan's pleasure—and perhaps that's enough to make it worth enduring.

“However, you _are_ getting rather loud.” Morrigan pats Leliana’s thigh, rubbing her palm over the tender parts that had just been tormented. “Shall I gag you?”

Leliana hesitates. “If so, how should I signal if I’ve had enough?”

Morrigan cocks her head. “Your hands. Fist, open, closed. Hands starred. That should be easy enough to tell.”

Leliana shakes her head. “I can snap?”

“Oh? Can you?”

Leliana snaps her fingers on the right, then the left. There is some strain against her bonds, but not enough to interfere.

Morrigan watches, unblinking. Her mouth has fallen in a startled ‘O.’

“Can _you_ snap?” Leliana asks, immediately curious.

Morrigan shakes her head, then flushes, a scarlet blotch across her cheeks.

“Can you whistle? Blow music from a jug? Spin sound from water and glass?”

Each vehement shudder answers that, even as Morrigan stamps her mouth shut. The embarrassment drips down her cheeks and onto her chest, leaving a fetching pink on all that exposed skin. Finally, Morrigan stammers, “Hush!” and grabs Leliana’s smallclothes, wadding them up and stuffing it into Leliana’s mouth.

Leliana closes her mouth obediently around the gag, tongue nestled beneath the fabric. She remembers more indulgent times, when her underthings had been lace and silk, wispy scraps of practically nothing, but plain linen has its own charm. She can bite down, feel her teeth scrape against the fabric. Run her tongue along the weave, taste the lingering sweat and sex of her own body. It forces her to breathe through her nose, to take heaving pants. It brings awareness to the saliva in her mouth, cupped under her tongue and drawn from the back of her throat. The gag absorbs it all, but she can feel the dry scrape of it against her teeth as contrast to the growing damp where it sits deeper in her mouth.

Morrigan nestles in place, on her belly between Leliana's legs. She dips her head, sucking and biting along Leliana's thighs, fingers curled into Leliana's pubic hair and tugging her open as she finally lights her tongue on Leliana's clit. She laps, long broad strokes of her tongue in slow torment. Leliana groans, attempting to hook her knees over Morrigan's shoulders, but Morrigan pushes them aside and presses her elbows into Leliana's thighs, keeping her open. She moves into harder jabs of her tongue, flicking into patterns that Leliana cannot recognize—perhaps they are runes, perhaps they are words, perhaps they are only a product of Morrigan's fancy, but they move with such purpose that Leliana distracts herself with attempting to decipher them and when another long roll begins in her belly and courses its way all through her torso, crashing through her spine as her body arches, struggles, as her shoulders strain and her spine knots and her hands fist around nothing and the orgasm starts to break, Leliana is almost unprepared when—

Morrigan _lets_ her come, lets her wring herself out into a long shudder, the gag sodden in her mouth and her heart beating tympany on the wall of her ribs as her body goes slack with relief.

Morrigan kisses her clit, then her thighs. She drags herself up alongside Leliana, touching her cheek, then kissing the hollow of her throat. She touches Leliana's wrists, allowing the shackles to dissipate, and pulls the gag from Leliana's mouth.

"How are you feeling?"

Leliana lets out a long sigh, a warm exhale she hadn't realized she was holding. Breath can burn when held too long, but becomes such sweetness in release. "Good. I must ask—where did you learn these games, living in the Wilds?"

Morrigan sits up, and it might be coincidence that she is facing away from Leliana as she reaches for the potatoes, but—

"The Wintersend edition of The Randy Dowager."

"And where did you get The Randy Dowager?" Leliana asks, biting her tongue to keep from giggling. She holds out her hands, the potatoes now cool enough to hold as Morrigan slices them open with a knife.

“A traveling merchant had an unattended bag. I simply… _liberated_ the most interesting-looking volume,” Morrigan says, sprinkling more rosemary into the warm pocket. Leliana knows the herb from the tame kitchen gardens of the Lothering chantry and Lady Cecilie’s estate, but it grows wild in these parts. It helps add flavor when they have little salt, no butter, and nothing in the way of spice. “We had little entertainment in the wilds, and I hungered for anything new. I judged the most dogeared tome to be the one of greatest interest, and the cheap woodcuts implied it was easily replaced.”

“Did you truly worry about the merchant replacing it?”

Morrigan snorts. “Anything too valuable would have drawn attention.”

Leliana takes a bite of her potato, then another.

Mentally, she clothes Morrigan in gowns and jewels.

. . .

“How _could_ you,” Leliana spits, and this is stupid, this is foolish, she knows Tabris could have a knife in her kidneys before Leliana could hiss another word, and Leliana would _deserve_ it after following the Warden this far. Leliana has sung this song, danced this dance, and they are on the cusp of battle for the final movement. Victory is not assured, even less assured if she starts questioning orders, but—

Tabris scowls, fists clenched at her sides and shoulders squared as she juts her chin, managing that strange trick of looming even when she barely reaches Leliana’s shoulder. “She offered. She _offered_ , Leliana. Do you think I would have _made_ her sleep with that noble bastard?” Tabris’ hands shake, and her body vibrates as if it is only force of will that keeps her bound together, as if she might fly apart otherwise. Undone in a moment of rage, meat from bone and fury from flesh. Normally, Leliana thinks Tabris likes Alistair, or at least tolerates him as a well-trained pet, but—

“Morrigan’s the only shem I’d be proud to call ‘cousin.’ You know how she feels about Alistair—do you think she would have even _offered_ if she didn’t think it was the only way? So no. I didn’t refuse. I _couldn’t_ refuse.” Tabris narrows her eyes, glittering like daggers. “I didn’t join the Wardens because of some noble calling, Leliana. I joined because I didn’t have a fucking _choice_.” She spits the words like accusation, like damnation. “So no. I’m not willing to kill myself or Alistair to save this shitty kingdom. Not when he’s promised a bann for the alienage.”

Leliana bites her lip, swallows a scream. Her own body shaking now, like a leaf in a storm. The air hangs thick between them, strewn with words unsaid and thoughts unvoiced. One wrong word could ignite the breath in their lungs, make a pyre of mutual destruction.

Leliana does not know if she and Tabris will still be friends.

She does not know if they were ever truly friends.

“I apologize,” she says finally, voice tight. Hold back the hurt, hold back the pain, tie it in a knot and swallow it down like a heavy stone. There will be time for this after the battle. And if not—well, none of this will matter anyway. “I should have known that Morrigan would never have let herself be used this way. That you would never have asked.”

Tabris relaxes her jaw, the fires banking in her eyes. “Apology accepted.” She raises a hand, hesitant, and manages an awkward pat on Leliana’s arm. One tap, heavy on her fingertips. One more, with a squeeze on the bicep. “If it helps any, I think she would appreciate seeing you. After.”

So Leliana waits. She sharpens her knives, checks her arrows, performs the stretches of hands and arms that are essential for any archer. She lingers at the closed door, arms embraced about herself so her palms touch her shoulders, stretching towards her spine. She interlocks her fingers, palms out in front of her, arches towards the sky. Her body is a nocked arrow, waiting for release.

Morrigan emerges wearing a heavy cloak. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair disheveled, and all of Leliana’s words turn to ash in her mouth. Instead, she grabs Morrigan’s shoulders and pushes her against the wall, hard and rough. Morrigan tastes of sweat and the tang of an unfamiliar body, her thighs smeared hot and sticky as Leliana wedges a knee between her legs. Leliana claws her neck, nails leaving white lines against the skin, and buries teeth at her throat in a wild frenzy of anger, love, possession.

This is truth sharper than a bard’s tale: in this moment, Leliana could _kill_ Alistair.

It is jealousy, as of Maferath for the Maker, the petty smallness that lost Andraste to the world—but the Chant, beautiful as it is, holds no balm. Leliana cannot hide her jealousy from herself, and reclaims Morrigan in every snap of teeth, every divot of fingers in flesh.

“Let us finish in privacy,” Morrigan murmurs, and Leliana could weep for how small she sounds, how soft. She kisses Morrigan’s neck, her shoulders, the petty scratches and bites she has inflicted, and they go to their private quarters.

Morrigan has prepared, it seems. Or perhaps some thoughtful servant thought the Warden's party might like a bath before the final push to Denerim. The tub is still warm, discreet runes carved into the base. Morrigan undoes her cloak and lets her clothes fall to the floor before slipping into the tub with careless ease, groaning as she unties her hair and starts combing it with her fingers. Schmooples makes a small peep, nosing at Leliana's feet, but Leliana gives him an absent pat and attends Morrigan instead.

"Allow me," Leliana says, kneeling on the floor behind Morrigan. Morrigan deserves more in the way of luxury; a fine-bristled brush scented with rosewater, oils and creams and all the finery of the Orlesian court, but at least Leliana can offer her this. Leliana combs Morrigan's hair in sections, tip to root, then massages her scalp in small circles, her fingers tracing benedictions in every movement. She braids Morrigan's hair, pinning it into a coiled crown atop her head. Leliana then takes a small cloth and lathers it with soap. The bar is dotted with tiny lavender blossoms, releasing their scent as the petals crumble into the bath, and Leliana washes Morrigan's back. She wipes the long red scratches across Morrigan's shoulders, the bruises across her hip. Thinks, with wonder, of how she has marked Morrigan, over and over.

"Do you think less of me now?" Morrigan asks, soft in the silence. The water sloshes in the tub as she shifts, leaning forward against her knees.

Leliana breathes out through her nostrils, long and slow. "No. I could never think less of you for helping a friend."

"Even if ‘twas not my original intent?"

Flemeth's name lingers, unspoken.

"I have never claimed to understand your reasons, but I am glad you are with us," Leliana says. She wrings out the cloth, dipping it in the water and lathering it with more soap. If the bath were big enough for two, she might slip in with Morrigan and wash her heart of all this grief. Instead, she circles the tub, washing Morrigan's limbs as Morrigan raises them from the water in offering. Leliana holds Morrigan's foot, soaping her from calf to ankle, scrubbing between the toes and kissing the tips after each wash. Better to bury herself in this small work than to dwell on the inchoate thing gnawing Leliana's heart-muscle, growing like dark brambles from bitter soil. It's invasive and wild, like mint, honeysuckle, wisteria, clotting her veins with want. Selfish, foolish, yet—

"Will this work, if you do not conceive?" she asks, thinking of the childless pairs she has known. Months, years, full cycles and tides of want and wane and trying, and one night is no guarantee.

"I will conceive," Morrigan says simply.

So Leliana massages, kisses, and finally gentles Morrigan to bed.


	2. Wax and Wane

The breeze should feel fresher, the sun brighter, the heart softer, but the world does not pivot on one kingdom or one Blight.

Morrigan had tried to slip away after the battle, with the walls still ringing celebration and blood still soaking the earth, but Leliana caught her first. They had fought, if it could be called such—if shouting came from the heart rather than the lungs, and if a kiss could be more teeth than lips. Leliana demanded to know where she was going, when this had been decided. She had never claimed to understand Morrigan, but—

“Do you not owe us a goodbye, at least?” Leliana asked. Screamed. Begged.

So Morrigan stayed for the coronation, with a smile of victory that later—much later—Leliana realized was _relief_.

The breeze is no fresher, the sun no brighter, the heart no softer.

Leliana holds Morrigan’s hand through the ceremony, side-by-side in stiff chairs, necks prickling from the weight of so many watching, the piqued interest of the masses gazing not only the new king, but also his companions. Leliana’s palms sweat, itching between the crevices of their hands and fingers. When she finally lets go, it is with relief. Leliana keeps peeking sideways though, afraid Morrigan might vanish if not under constant surveillance.

If this bothers Morrigan, it does not show.

After the ceremony, King Alistair, the crown still fresh on his brow, asks if Leliana would be willing to lead an expedition to the Deep Roads. He had thought to scout for brood mothers, but at the mention of ‘mother’ Leliana can only think of Morrigan, full-bellied and pregnant.

So she refuses, and Alistair sighs.

“Do take care of them, won’t you?” he asks, finally.

Morrigan tells Leliana she plans to travel west, to the Frostbacks. She does not say that Leliana is invited, but if Leliana weren’t she would not have been given even this little knowledge. It is, perhaps, not an apology for Morrigan’s earlier attempt to leave without goodbye, but it still makes amends.

Leliana and Morrigan purchase provisions, new boots and warm clothes and while there is no chance to truly _shop_ , Leliana finds a scarf in the back of a merchant’s stall. She holds it up to the light, red-purple in full sun, wine-dark in shadow. It stirs a memory of distant shores, visiting the dye-makers with Marjolaine; the stinking vats of snails, the tiny creatures crushed and processed in lead jars in order to create the prized color. Beauty from destruction, something abhorrent to something adored.

The dye alone is worth its weight in silver, then there are the travel costs from the Venefication Sea—but Leliana trades on smile and charm and the fact that she is of the Hero of Fereldan’s inner circle, and manages to acquire it for an only mildly exorbitant price.

Morrigan smiles, sniffs, and permits Leliana to drape it about her shoulders.

They journey westward, and Leliana makes it her mission to nourish Morrigan, as much and as often as possible. To eat is to know—to build flesh from substance, to give Morrigan as much love as she can bear. From mother’s milk to lover’s kiss, perhaps love is always in the things we mouth. They stop by the inns for simple meals, and Morrigan gnaws roasted marrow, a pure melt of brown fat on warm bread. Leliana orders red pears poached in wine and honey, spiced with clove and cinnamon, and prepares sachets of mint tea and chamomile against Morrigan’s protests of “I am _pregnant_ , not _ill._ ” Leliana silences her with an apple galette.

Morrigan rolls her eyes and permits herself to be bribed. She even steals crumbs to Schmooples, when she thinks Leliana isn’t looking.

The days turn into weeks, which turn into months and miles and greater changes as Morrigan grows.

When the nausea comes, it is hardly restricted to the morning. Morrigan is forced to eat smaller meals, more often, in order to combat the waves of acid that sweep her belly. Her bladder forces them to stop frequently in order for her to relieve herself, all this in spite of Morrigan’s curses that her belly is not _that_ big yet, surely the child is _not_ stomping on her every organ.

“Have you ever tended a pregnant woman before?” Leliana asks, rubbing Morrigan’s feet as they lay up for the night. Her feet are tender, her ankles swollen, and while that may not be a direct result of the pregnancy, Leliana cannot help fussing anyway. Their spark has always been their conflict; force them to live together, wife and wife and mothers both, and Leliana knows they would gnaw their own limbs to escape the domestic cage. Leliana can be so loving only because she knows they walk separate paths. This is a temporary status, one last gift between lovers.

“No,” Morrigan says sullenly. “I was raised an only child, if you recall.”

“It’s not so difficult,” Leliana says, thumbs pressing the hollows of Morrigan’s foot, then rubbing across the ball of the foot, one by one beneath each joint. Morrigan winces, but sighs as Leliana cracks the tension between her hands. “Not so difficult you need alarm, at least. But neither is it so simple. Do you have a midwife?”

“An Avvar woman.” Morrigan’s gaze turns pensive, eyes drawn inward. “She had traveled to the Korcari Wilds, and may still remember me. If not, then Flemeth’s name should still have power.”

Leliana lets out a long breath, an unfelt weight now lifted. She knows more of taking life than giving it.

Morrigan snorts, regaining some of her usual scorn as she waggles her toes at Leliana. Leliana takes the hint, massaging the other foot as Morrigan begins speaking.

“Men are so quick to think women weak—as if it takes more strength to haul hay than laundry, as if women have not been doing both since time began. As if labor and birth are less taxing than battle, simply because one does not swing a sword at the denouement.”

“Is it no less sexist to reduce women to parts, to womb and birth?” Leliana says tartly, rubbing a knuckle into Morrigan’s heel.

Morrigan sniffs. “‘Tis not my intention. I have found more companionship with women—young, old, with womb, without, with child, without—than ever with men.”

“Have you ever enjoyed men?” Leliana asks curiously.

Morrigan wrinkles her nose, then tilts her head, as if undecided between a shake and a nod. “Physical admiration has little to do with companionship.”

“Companionship, enjoyment—I did not mean just physical,” Leliana says, propping Morrigan’s foot on her knee as she stretches her hands. She reaches for a tub of salve, warming it between her palms before massaging it into Morrigan’s calluses. “Have you ever ranked any man more than ‘tolerable’?”

Morrigan chuckles. “Sten, I suppose. Which proves that it is not a fault of their gender, but perhaps one of their upbringing.” She lowers her hand over her belly, absently tracing a thumb across the dark line that has grown from navel to pubis. “If my child is a son, I shall have to raise him better.”

 _Is any child worth this?_ Leliana wonders. Tabris’ life is no small gift, but—

Leliana notes her jealousy and plucks it in her mind. Examines it like venom in a vial, turning to study its glittering splash. She need not love the baby—this creature spawned from necessity and desperation, between two people who despise one another—to love Morrigan, but it is incompatible with any longer affair.

Quietly, Morrigan says, “I will be a better mother than mine.”

Leliana’s throat tightens as Morrigan draws back her foot. Morrigan arranges herself for sleep, curved on her side with one leg splayed out for balance, a rolled cloak in front of her for cushioning. Leliana slots herself in the space behind, body curved to match Morrigan’s, her hand crossing the crest of the hip to lay, gentle, over Morrigan’s hand on top of her belly.

. . .

When they finally reach the Avvar, they are like two moons in wax and wane. Morrigan’s body has grown full, round, magnificent, while Leliana is but a pared crescent. Leliana has been eating her share of the rations, and has gained some small share of weight as well—padding about her hips, a generous spread about her thighs—in empathy with Morrigan’s own, but there is no mistaking anxious caretaker for mother-to-be.

“Duvash Byrnasdotten?” Morrigan calls, her scarf wrapped so firm that Leliana wonders that it does not muffle her words.

The woman looks at her. She is tall and dark, older than Wynne, perhaps, with the gnarled strength of a cliff-hanging tree. She wears a necklace of black feathers, and her white hair is tied in long plaits.

“Morrigan Flemethdotten. Daughter of vengeance.” Duvash dips her head and smiles. Leliana nearly recoils, shocked by the red-brown stain on the woman’s teeth. Duvash’s smile only widens. “It has been years, woman. What brings you here?”

Morrigan hesitates, breath in her throat, and Leliana cannot help but answer.

"She is with child, and needs aid."

"I do not _need_ ," Morrigan is quick to argue, glaring sideways. Good. Anger will serve her better than hesitancy. "But I do request."

Duvash laughs, a great big boom that cracks the air. "You have come a long way to give birth, lowlander. Why?"

"Because my mother is dead, and I would rather have someone I know to help."

Duvash watches, unblinking. She pulls a small plug of something sharply pungent from a pouch on her hip, wrapped in a dark green leaf. She pops it in her mouth, chewing. Red juices well up at the corners of her lips, and she finally spits a bloody-looking liquid that spatters the ground. “I will help you, Morrigan."

. . .

Morrigan adjusts to life among the Avvar as easily—or as irritably—as she does to everything else. She is no bedbound patient, but questions Duvash on herblore and ritual, visits the shamans to argue and to learn. People are passing problems for her, transient as midges. There are older secrets, lasting knowledge, and Morrigan has no time for smaller questions.

So Leliana busies herself among the hunters of the hold, proves her skill at archery and takes friendly bets to see who can split a target from farther away. She wades among the mess of evergreens and breathes deep, learns the difference between larch and fir, spruce and pine. She learns the dark, hard nuts that are too bitter to eat, that can only germinate in the apocalyptic heat of fires that rage according to year and season. The rocks and lichen of the mountains form patterns for those with eyes to see. Leliana has always considered herself an archer rather than a hunter, but she learns the hidden paths, starts to see the forest as more than a mass of endless green. It is entirely different from reading a city to learn its ebb and flow, to see its traffic as patterns rather than chaos. It is exhilarating in its newness, its strangeness.

She watches the skies, learns unfamiliar names to familiar stars, and trades songs and stories.

Duvash sits beside her on one of those nights, when Leliana’s watching the moon with all its shadows.

“How many years?” Duvash asks without preamble.

Leliana does not turn, but catches the peppery scent of Duvash’s red chew. “I’m sorry?”

“How many years have you and Morrigan been together?”

Leliana hesitates. “A little over a year. Not quite two.”

“And how many years lie ahead?”

“I don’t know,” Leliana admits. She tucks her knees to her chest, bundling for warmth. Not much longer, I think. I don’t want her to be alone for the birth, but after—we walk different paths.”

“There’s no shame in that,” Duvash says affably. She nudges Leliana’s arm, offering a leaf-wrapped chew. Leliana shakes her head, and Duvash shrugs and pops it in her own mouth. “We Avvar have a custom, you know. We tie knots on a rope, and challenge newly-weds to undo those knots. The number undone means the number of years the marriage will last.” She smiles, bright and bloody in the moonlight. “Of course, there are ways to cheat. That’s acceptable too.”

“I think it’s better we part as friends, rather than stay and drive ourselves apart.” Leliana frowns, then bites her cheek. There is no reason to spill her thoughts to this stranger, even one who has agreed to care for Morrigan.

Duvash’s eyes glitter. “Permanence is a folly. The gods live in all things.”

. . .

"I am the size of the moon," Morrigan groans, leaning back on her nest of cushions and blankets. They are fortunate to have this home to themselves, a wooden structure built for guests of the hold, distant kin and traders. It allows them to stay secluded for just a little longer, a precious moment of warmth against their inevitable parting.

"You’ve always been a celestial body," Leliana agrees, kissing Morrigan's cheek, then daring to slip her hands up Morrigan's chest.

Morrigan swats her hand away. "No, I am leaking again," she complains. "My breasts are tender, my nipples sore." She even moves differently, a slow sway around her new center of gravity, and her arms and thighs bear the soft lines of new stretch marks.

"How can I help?"

Morrigan frowns, then holds out her hand. "Another pad, perhaps."

Leliana takes a thin cloth from their supplies, folds it into a square, then hands it to Morrigan.

Morrigan pats it in place under her shirt, then sighs. "There is much I wish to do, and little that I feel capable of. I wish to move, to travel, but am bound to this place and this time. I wish to be done with _this_ ," she adds, her palm in slow circle over her belly, "but the baby follows its own schedule."

"Is it such a shame, spending this extra time together?" Leliana teases. "After I finally taught you to snap?"

Morrigan rolls her eyes, covering a smile as she tilts her head. “Leaving so soon? I am sure I will need no less help, once the baby has come.”

Divine Justinia’s letter weighs heavy on Leliana’s chest, folded within its leather pouch and hidden beneath all her layers. It had arrived shortly after the coronation. Morrigan had made no secret of having other plans, but had never asked Leliana about her own.

“I had thought to go to Val Royeaux,” Leliana says carefully.

Morrigan’s eyes sharpen.

Leliana swallows. “Divine Justinia sent word that my services might be of use. I could do more good within the Chantry than on the road.” Every word a snare, every syllable a confession.

“I find it strange that you return so eagerly, having left that cage.” Morrigan’s breath scarce leaves her teeth, her lips pressed tight.

“It’s one of the few places I have felt peace, Morrigan. We are both seeking truth, in our fashions.”

Morrigan swallows, gaze distant. Thoughtful. Then her mouth twists, yanks down in an exaggerated grimace. “The truth is this: I might _murder_ you if we spent more time together.”

“It must be lonely, being right all the time,” Leliana agrees, with a flutter of relief. Even sour grapes can be a kindness, so long as they avoid argument.

There is a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire.

At first, Leliana thinks that Morrigan has fallen asleep, but finally Morrigan says, "Perhaps that is true."

It is a small thing, a soft thing, and before Leliana can question it Morrigan raises her voice and imperiously snaps her fingers.

"Our time is fleeting. There is something I wish to try."

"Oh? And what’s that?" Leliana asks, allowing Morrigan to deflect.

"I have a spell to summon tentacles," Morrigan says. Her eyes glitter, her smile teasing. "I may not be able to do anything strenuous, but I think you would look quite pretty bound and probed."

Leliana's eyes widen, and she lets out a hoot of laughter. "Was this another spell from the Randy Dowager?"

Morrigan rolls her eyes and flicks her fingers dismissively. "To be fair, it _does_ have uses in combat. To ensnare, to entrap. But frankly, I would much rather use them for pleasure."

Leliana opens her mouth to say 'yes,' then hesitates at the horrible image of calamari rings and grilled squid. "Do these have—suckers?"

"Not unless you wish there to be."

Leliana shakes her head vehemently.

"Very well, no suckers," Morrigan chuckles. "Is it otherwise agreeable?"

"Are they sentient?"

"No more so than a vine, being trained to climb."

"And how many can you call?"

Morrigan laughs. "Greedy, are you not? I can summon up to a dozen." She holds up her fists, lazily extending her fingers as she starts counting. "I would like one on each of your legs, spreading you open. One to hold your arms. One between your pretty breasts." She smirks. "One in your cunt. One in your ass. One to rub your clit. And that is only seven."

"I'm sure you could find uses for the others," Leliana murmurs. "None for my mouth?"

"Because you sing so beautifully, nightingale."

Leliana rolls her eyes, ducks her head to hide a smile. "Where would you like me, then?"

"On the floor, in front of me. Kneeling—oh, and do take a blanket, fold it under you. You shall want the comfort, I am sure. Strip first."

Leliana follows orders, taking a heavy blanket and folding into a thick cushion for her knees. She shivers, nipples hardening and her flesh puckering all over as she undresses, folding each layer carefully before setting it aside. She will obey Morrigan, of course, but there is no reason to hurry. Especially not when Morrigan seethes so prettily with impatience. Until Morrigan commands her otherwise, Leliana will crease her trousers just-so, folding them in half, then half again, and set them in a neat square on top of her coat. Her tunic follows, a deliberate rustle of fabric as Leliana shakes out the wrinkles of wear even as her teeth chatter. Then she removes her socks and smallclothes, tucks them in a tidy bundle and sets them on top.

"You are a trial," Morrigan complains.

Leliana smiles, rubbing her arms to stay warm as she takes to her knees. "I only obey."

The fire's more light than heat at this point, but Morrigan snaps her fingers and sends long tongues of flame leaping. The air warms. Marginally. Then Morrigan sighs, eyes flat and mouthing words of power, or perhaps simply of concentration before the black tentacles spring from the floor in a writhing mass. Leliana cautiously opens her mouth to lick one as it passes by her face, stroking her cheek and brushing over her shoulder. It's strangely bland, like an inferior olive oil, but not objectionable. The smooth gloss allows it to glide over her skin, shiver-cool before warming to the touch.

“Raise your hands over your head, wrists crossed. Knees wide—good, good.”

The orders are more reminder than command, the position familiar. Morrigan likes when Leliana sits just-so, her knees spread to give a glimpse of her inner folds, her elbows loose and relaxed. A tentacle coils around her wrists and pulses, as if testing its grip. Her body is embraced in organic loops as another tentacle slides between her breasts, wrapping her in sinuous curves and constrained comfort. She closes her eyes, hoping to enhance the sensation of being embraced and enveloped, but it only reminds her of how truly alien this new experience is—there is no lingering warmth, no stray hands to touch or test the bonds, but only the pulsing squeeze of the tentacles wrapped around her. She bites her lip, then gasps as one of the tentacles slides between her legs, wrapping her thighs and rubbing against her clit. She tries bearing down to get more pressure, but groans as the tentacles holding her wrists tug her up instead.

“Not until you’re all wrapped up, my dear,” Morrigan says, mockingly sweet.

Leliana sags against the tentacles in passive resistance, then groans as another tentacles slides down the cleft of her buttocks, pressing against her hole with cool pressure. Despite its slickness, it is too large for easy entry. Leliana groans, straightening up again to shy away.

“Too big? Too bad. I’m sure we can make it fit. With sufficient warm-up,” Morrigan chuckles.

Leliana takes a shuddering breath, belly fluttering. Her treacherous cunt seems to have only grown more slick with anticipation. “I look forward to it,” she manages, struggling to keep her tone neutral. Her breath is hot, face flushed, and her body feels like tinder, fragile and flammable. The cold is gone in an erotic haze.

“I’m sure you do,” Morrigan teases, as a tentacle wraps around Leliana’s other thigh. They brace her apart, keeping her open, vulnerable as another tentacle sways in front of Leliana. The tip writhes as if in indecision before flicking over her clit—so much like a tongue, it makes Leliana groan—and sliding into her cunt. It’s a small thing, perhaps only the width of a finger, but coils and writhes, feeding itself into her until the pressure makes her groan. It is not a heavy fullness but a constant tickle of movement, massaging her inner walls and making her whimper, almost forgetting the next tentacle as it coils into a tiny loop, drawing back the hood of her clit and wrapping around it in a wet swirl.

Leliana moans, struggling against her bonds, but the tentacles around her thighs are merciless in their restraint. They keep her helplessly locked in place as behind her, she can feel her cheeks being spread and another tentacle—perhaps the same one as earlier, now shrunk small, or perhaps a different one entirely—probing its way into her ass. There’s little resistance, once it goes past the tightness of her outer sphincter, and Morrigan laughs as Leliana pulls with her arms, shoulders heaving and breasts shaking with the effort.

“This is _much_ easier than last time we played with your ass.”

“Well, we’ve had practice,” Leliana pants, arching her back and paralyzed with indecision—forward, back, up, down, all directions seem equally impossible—before slumping in her restraints. The tentacles in her cunt and ass squirm, as if brushing hello to one another through the wetness of her inner walls, and then the one in her ass starts to swell, stiffening as it goes deeper, rocking in and out, forcing Leliana’s body to sway and weave in time with its movement. It’s all so much, almost too much, her clit begging for relief from the constant pressure of the swirling tentacle and her cunt strangely full yet aching for more, her thighs smeared with with her own arousal and the glistening lube of the tentacles, and still that tentacle fucking her in the ass and forcing to lean forward, to groan and sweat and clench with the effort of taking it all, of being a good girl and still listening for Morrigan’s command.

“Tell me if you’re about to come.”

“Yes, yes,” Leliana groans.

"'Yes' that you'll tell me, or 'yes' that you are about to come right now?"

"Both?" Leliana manages, because it feels far too good to stop, and she can see that peak, taste it, can already imagine the sweet rush of victory and euphoric collapse—

"No." Morrigan snaps her fingers—and for one stinging moment Leliana wishes she never taught Morrigan that stupid trick—and the tentacles stop. The one on her clit retreats, and the one in her cunt goes still, now little more than an inert pressure. Only the one in her ass keeps going, rocking her on her shins so her knees dig into the blanket, so her whole body has gone quiet save for the low squelch of lube dripping out of her.

"Morrigan, I can’t come like this," Leliana begs, hating the petulant whine in her own voice. "Please, let me—"

"You will come. Just not yet," Morrigan says. A cruel promise, and Morrigan has always kept her promises, but oh—

"When?"

"When you are able to take that tentacle," Morrigan says. "The one that wouldn't fit."

Leliana laughs nervously. How large was it, truly? She had only reacted to it feeling too big, without any true sense of its scale.

Morrigan raises an eyebrow. "You have taken my fist before. This should pose no greater challenge."

"But that was not my _ass_!"

"Do you want to stop?" Morrigan asks.

The question slaps Leliana in the face. She inhales, cold air warming its way through her nostrils, then exhales through her mouth. Lets her breath hang in the air as she weighs her words. All the tentacles have stopped now, leaving her suspended in her thoughts. An isolated moment of clarity, free of further stimulation.

Morrigan has always deserved thoughtful answers, not just easy ones.

“No, I do not want to stop,” Leliana says finally. “I’m enjoying this, and I enjoy when you let me come after a long delay—but I’m not sure about the size. If I truly cannot take it, then…?”

Morrigan relents, face softening as she leans forward and uncrosses her ankles. “Then I will let you come, my sweet.”

“And how big is it, really?”

Morrigan gestures with her hand, thumb and forefinger looped in a circle without touching.

Leliana lets out a chuckle, relief mingled with laughter. It’s larger than anything else she has had up there, but still. Smaller than a fist, which had been her first worry.

“It will be tapered,” Morrigan promises. “And if you need more lubrication—”

"It’s not about lube, but stretch," Leliana groans. "But—if you take it slow, I think I can manage. Especially if you keep touching my clit," she adds, with a meaningful squeeze of her thighs.

Morrigan nods, and the tentacle resumes rubbing Leliana's clit. It takes longer, slower circles now, an indirect pressure above her clit and through the soft padding of her labia. The tentacle inside her cunt withdraws in one long wet slide, leaving Leliana clenching in absence. As if to compensate, the tentacle in her ass starts moving again, slow and gentle. Leliana thinks she might come from this, given enough time to build a rhythm, but just as she thinks that the one in her ass slides deeper, _thicker_ , and Leliana grits her teeth against the stretch. Uncomfortable, but not painful. Yet—

"Please, Morrigan, may I set the pace?" she asks.

Morrigan nods permission, and the tentacles go still once more.

Leliana takes a deep breath, then shifts her weight forward, wriggling her toes so they are flexed beneath her heels. She uses the overhead restraints for balance, rocking forward, then back, testing the angle and resistance of the tentacles. Satisfied, she rocks herself further back, sitting on the tentacles about her thighs, then back again. Forward, easing—then back, stretching. Slowly fucking herself on the tentacle. The smooth length of it helps, at least; she need not fear it slipping out as she rocks forward, and every time she goes back she feels herself relax a little more, her body slowly accommodating. Her breath comes in tiny whimpers as she works her way down, and even though there is no flared base for her to stop against, she relaxes in victory once she realizes there is no further stretch, that its width has plateaued.

“How are you feeling?” Morrigan asks.

Leliana groans, setting her feet flat once more. “I think—I think I prefer it as pressure, for now. But if you start the one on my clit again, I would like to come.”

“Would you like the other one back in your cunt?”

Leliana shakes her head, managing a weak chuckle. “I think I might burst.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” Morrigan teases.

“A no. This time.”

For the first time, Leliana notices that Morrigan has been touching herself, her hand moving in slow circles beneath the blankets, almost hidden under the overhang of her belly.

"Are you enjoying the show?"

"The show's not done yet," Morrigan retorts, the tentacle on Leliana's clit grinding up, then down, slippery and frictionless as it rubs up, up, pushing up the hood of her clit and rubbing hard. Leliana grits her teeth, overstimulated and shaking and trying to remember to put on a good show, to gasp and moan and writhe but all artistry fails in favor of honesty as her body clamps around the tentacle, as her knees try to clench and her nails bite her palms and she comes, and comes, and then—

Just like that it goes from pleasure, overwhelming, to discomfort, to the dull ache of her arms from being bound overhead, the soreness in her knees and the way her clit has gone from pleasure to near-pain.

"Stop, stop. Enough. I came, I came," Leliana murmurs, the words forming their own sort of chant even as the tentacles withdraw, as Morrigan banishes them with a wave of her hand. Leliana catches herself on her knees, panting. The glistening lube—or perhaps oil—that the tentacles had secreted vanishes with them, making clean-up marginally easier even as Leliana's thighs stick together.

"Come to bed," Morrigan coaxes, rising to her feet and groaning as she makes a slow waddle to Leliana's side. She pulls Leliana upright, then leads her back to the nest of blankets and pillows. It takes some fussing to get comfortable again, to arrange Morrigan without putting weight on her back and so that Leliana can cuddle against Morrigan's shoulder without pressing her belly.

Perhaps this, too, is why they cannot live together—they always yearn to touch, to be touched, but if they hold tight they only beg for release.

. . .

When Morrigan’s water breaks, Duvash is ready.

Leliana is not.

“Boil water! Get linen! Do _not_ stand there like a stump!” Duvash snaps. Chastened, Leliana moves to obey—for if she is a stump, she is one uprooted, roots still clinging to shattered earth while swept away in a torrent. This water may as well be cataclysmic flood, the beginning of the end, and under the panic in her throat and her lungs beating her chest she knows that this is the end of her time with Morrigan, that they will soon part now that that baby is coming—

“You heard the woman. Do not be a _stump_ , Leliana,” Morrigan gasps, half-laughing, half-shaking as she leans on Duvash.

Leliana’s tongue sharpens in retort, but she bites it down instead. She busies herself with boiling water, pulling out clean linens and blankets and preparing cups of mint tea. Morrigan waves away the offered drink, instead walking circles about the hut and groaning as the contractions hit.

“Are you strong enough…?” Leliana asks, uncertain. For all that she has attended pregnant women in the past, she had never been present at the actual birth. Morrigan has always been an undiscovered country, but this is unknown territory beyond even that.

Morrigan rolls her eyes. “Am I strong enough? Women have been giving birth since time began, and I am _not_ some delicate Orlesian flower.” She grins, teeth long and sharp.

“Good, because I am not some Orlesian doctor,” Duvash grunts. “I heard they give _enemas_. In _public_.”

Leliana’s tongue unfolds from her mouth. “That was _one_ emperor!”

“Isn’t one _enough_?” Duvash retorts.

Leliana concedes the point.

Duvash grumbles her way through an entire litany of criticism against the practice, including a brief foray into tobacco smoke enemas—which Leliana had never even _heard_ of, but Duvash claims that she heard from another midwife who heard from a sailor that they had, indeed, been practiced to revive victims of drowning—but it has Morrigan laughing, distracted, and perhaps that is all it needs to do.

Leliana takes turns with Duvash, walking Morrigan around the room, and while Duvash jokes and whispers dire warnings about lowlander birthing practices, Leliana hums and sings and rubs small circles on Morrigan’s back, holds her up and tries to imagine that every circle, every sway and waddle brings them one step closer to the birth. Strangely, Leliana had always imagined birth to be on a woman’s back—as if it were sleeping, as if giving birth were _restful_ in any way—but Duvash speaks of blood flow and gravity and Leliana knows she has asked these questions before, that Duvash has answered them before, that this is an endless cycle of call and response, but all the answers have flown from her head. It is worse than Leliana’s first battle, when Leliana had been a novice learning her blade and bow, because at least her muscles could go from memory, her body trained to instinct. All control, all sense of body, is thoroughly in Morrigan and the baby. Duvash has walked this road, knows the mile marks to expect, but Leliana is questing blind. All she can do is listen, obey, hold Morrigan and offer drinks to wet her mouth, comfort to ease her strain, and bleakly expect neither of those to do a thing to hasten the birth.

Time stretches, strange and elastic, and when Morrigan’s contractions pick up she shifts into a low squat off the edge of the bed, breathing in hard puffs through her mouth, eyes shut. Duvash snaps at Leliana to hold Morrigan, so Leliana obeys, and Duvash orders cycles of breath and push. Morrigan bears down, groaning—

The worst part, the strangest part, is that Morrigan should be _laughing_ at Leliana’s panic, should be mocking her anxieties and rolling her eyes and prickling her with barbed words, but Morrigan is too firmly in her own body, her own struggle. Morrigan’s face is red, sweating, her chin tucked to her chest and hair plastered to her scalp, where it does not fly away in frizzing strands.

Leliana should not be thinking of this, should be thinking instead of the child, but—

“A boy!” Duvash grunts, holding up the blood-smeared infant, then turning him over to give a hearty thump on his backside. He squalls, red and angry, and Duvash cleans him and presses him to Morrigan’s breast, where Morrigan immediately wraps him in blankets. He latches onto her nipple with hungry ferocity.

“Now for afterbirth,” Duvash chuckles, back on her knees with her hands out—

“You mean there is _more_?” Leliana squeaks.

Morrigan rolls her eyes, letting out a long huff. “Have you never delivered kittens, woman?”

“Have _you_?”

“Kittens are easier,” Duvash grumbles, and the placenta is an anticlimax after all that—a red blob of tissue and matter that Duvash inspects before nodding in satisfaction. Avvar tradition states that the placenta is to be buried under the birthing house, which makes a sort of sense. As life was given, so they give back. Perhaps it will nourish the soil.

. . .

Parenting, like falling in love, is an all-consuming thing. Morrigan nurtures the new-named Kieran with severity, a rose garden bounded in thorns. All priorities are up-ended in a cataclysm of self, new infant at the center of her universe. Morrigan values her freedom, but Kieran is a greater treasure still—apple of her heart, bone of her rib, fruit of ancient ritual.

In turn, Kieran loves fully and deeply. His mother is his all: her skin, her smile, her breast. Leliana is torn between adoration and intrusion. They never discussed what a baby would mean to them, as they had never discussed so much else.

They cannot redo their past, and can only cast shadows to the future.

"I love him because he is my child, not because he is my son," Morrigan says, nursing. She keeps Kieran swaddled, a tiny cap on top of the hair that already grows thick and dark. "Men are self-inflated creatures, too accustomed to declaring themselves sovereign of all they survey. My son will have pride, yes, but it will be _earned._ Of this I will ensure." Morrigan gives a cut-glass smile, a pain born with three generations already bound in it. Flemeth—all the many generations and bodies of her—Morrigan, Kieran.

Leliana does not know if Morrigan can break that umbilical chain, but Morrigan has always scoffed at bindings.

. . .

Their words are strained and few as Leliana prepares to leave. Perhaps if they had more time, they could—but no. This parting was inevitable, and there is no sense in mending what must soon be broken.

Or so Leliana thinks, when her caresses are not returned. When she lies in bed and seeks the warmth of Morrigan’s arms, only to be rebuffed by Morrigan and the child in her arms. When she brings soup and tea and Morrigan barely touches her beyond a brush of fingers as they transfer the warm bowl between them. In desperation, Leliana attempts to spoon-feed Morrigan as she nurses. Leliana cannot feed Kieran herself, but perhaps if she feeds Morrigan, some small measure of motherhood might transfer—

In the end, the only mercy Morrigan can offer is a clean break.

So Leliana sorts their possessions and packs what is hers. She takes a sliver of white soap and a tin of mint tea. She finds two twists of sugar-stick candy, one lemon and one orange. After some thought, she puts the lemon on her tongue, tucks it behind her teeth, and lets the gentle citrus flavor melt across her mouth. She leaves the orange for Morrigan, putting it on the pillow in silent offering.

Leliana wishes she could pack her memories so easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, tobacco smoke enemas were a thing for a while. As were the semi-public enemas of King Louis XIV, who would reportedly receive them during meetings with his advisors and close friends. I can only presume they were _very_ close.


	3. Vulnerability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes the death and funeral of the beloved Schmooples.

They embrace one last time—and Leliana prays it is not forever-last. She buries her face against Morrigan’s neck, between the folds of her scarf, under the sweep of her hair, and breathes the sharp scent of pine and skin. Morrigan gives Leliana a twisted loop of rosewood, the grain of which seems to change moment to moment. There are faces, animals, people, all in the deep whorls of wood, billowing into one another like shifting clouds. Quietly, Morrigan says that it will allow her to sense Leliana, and perhaps in return—

It is not a promise, but a friendship. A door left open, when Leliana feared it forever closed.

Whatever else they were, they are still friends.

The realization washes over her like water, prickles salt in her eyes as Leliana kisses Morrigan on the mouth, kisses Kieran on the nose, and embraces Duvash before the older woman rolls her eyes and jabs Leliana in the ribs.

Some nights the ring twinges, warm on her finger. Leliana keeps Morrigan’s name in her mouth, unspoken. Breath could break this fragile thread.

Leliana travels to Val Royeaux. She carries the miles in her feet and the years in her mouth, but the price was worth the cost. She buys three pink marzipan mice from a sweets vendor, solely because the woman’s hair is glossy as raven feathers and her brown eyes catch gold in the light. She feeds one to Schmooples and nibbles the other as she sits on a stone bench, warmed by the sun, and wonders where Dorothea is now. If she is still there under the burdens and obligations of Divine Justinia. If one self is ever truly exchanged for another.

Leliana enters the Grand Cathedral, the air soft with incense, but her arms have hauled corpses and her lungs remember pyres.

Sister Dorothea had set her free, once. Perhaps Divine Justinia simply set a long leash.

Their meeting lasts two hours and three pots of tea, plus a tray of snacks for Schmooples.

By the end of those hours, Schmooples sits on Dorothea’s lap, gently drooling on her robes of office, and Leliana is Left Hand of the Divine.

Leliana relearns old songs, hums the Chant as she prepares missives and agents, as she decodes ciphers and learns to carry walnuts and dried corn for the ravens. She meets the Right Hand of the Divine—one Cassandra Pentaghast, dour and grim-mouthed, though Leliana suspects softness beneath the bluster—and rediscovers that synapse between self and other, the push-pull of comfort and tension. There is comfort in the Chantry, yes, but she is also shadow to the Divine. Shadows extend where light fails, and Leliana drowns herself in the role.

She misses Morrigan as a habit. Wake up and wash her face, her hands. Scrub her teeth, ache with absence. Morrigan is no weak, water-willed woman who fits herself to her container, no—but to wish her confined would be to wish her other than she is. Leliana has known many masks, and Morrigan many shapes, but they remain true to their natures.

Leliana receives many messages, both personal and professional. There are the careful ciphers and furled strips that arrive by raven, and the coy messages from courtiers seeking favor with the Divine. There are creased letters sealed with wax and stamped with unfamiliar seals. There are envelopes stamped with the Fereldan royal crest, the handwriting sloppy enough that Leliana knows Alistair still writes them himself rather than dictates to a scribe. There are letters from Vigil’s keep, the emblem of the Grey Wardens pressed in red wax, written in a script that carves the paper, as if the writer chiseled her rage in every word. There are some from Wynne, her letters written in an elegant, spidery script that slopes ever-so-slightly to the right. There are even a few from Oghren and Zevran, Oghren’s letters spattered with mud or ale and Zevran’s laden with innuendo. Zevran’s letters prove an unexpected blessing, a delighted laugh amidst the grief of goodbye.

Leliana responds to every letter she can, but misses the ones that never arrive. The ones sealed with wax and stamped with a thumb. The ones with feathers tucked inside, the barbs ragged. The ones filled with euphemism and poetry, heat crackling between the lines, memory shading into what’s left unsaid.

Morrigan never sends them. Leliana is left to imagine what they would say.

Sometimes, Leliana writes letters of her own. She writes in ciphers and ellipses. She drafts missives and folds them in quarters, carries them next to her skin as talismans against unspoken fear. When her heart meters the date and she has worn all virtue from the crumpled pages, she burns them. She feeds each rolled page into the fire and watches the flames devour them to ash, scatters them until they are but a memory of ink and paper.

The truth is this: Leliana does not know _where_ to send them.

. . .

Zevran bursts into Val Royeaux like a song, some half-remembered ditty made fonder by nostalgia. He laughingly whirls Leliana to a small tavern hidden away in the theatre district. It is delightfully derelict in the fashion favored by rakish nobles and the seedier of the well-to-do merchants, everything filled with a lavish, overstuffed comfort. Zevran flirts with the waitress and secures a private table, separated from the rest of the tavern by a lattice screen. She leaves them with a bottle of wine and a tray with fruits, nuts, and small pastries.

As old friends do, they catch one another up—all things worn and new, delicately circling what is too tender to share. Zevran wears his time well, perhaps more easily than during the Blight. Hunting Crows holds little terror after fighting darkspawn. He smiles more, or perhaps Leliana had simply forgotten his brightness.

As old friends do, they reminisce over their time together. Inevitably, their talk circles to the person who had united them.

"Ah, but our Tabris is a mighty woman," Zevran sighs, clasping his hands together in mock swoon. He gives a ferocious eyebrow-waggle and winks. "Did you know, she put her entire _arm_ up Sten's—"

Leliana sputters into her wine, laughing. " _Zevran!_ "

"It’s true!"

"And why did she tell you?”

Zevran's grin widens. "Oh no, _she_ didn't tell me. _Sten_ did." He flutters his eyelashes. "He seemed quite proud of himself."

"And how did I miss _this_ conversation?"

Zevran waggles his eyebrows again, smirking. "You were quite busy with Morrigan, as I recall."

Leliana chuckles, topping off Zevran's drink before pouring herself another glass. "Ah, the things we miss."

"And you miss Morrigan?"

Leliana's tongue cleaves her throat. Stillness, still. Still as stone, as mountains. As deep lakes, untouched.

The wine overflows and splashes the table.

"Ah, so you _do_ miss her," Zevran says gently, already wiping the spill.

Leliana lifts her glass carefully and takes a sip. She sets it down again. "I care for her, yes."

Zevran's eyes glint. "And does she know this?"

"Of course she does! How can she not?" Leliana snaps, cheeks flushed as she struggles for composure. She has practiced restraint for so long, and yet one conversation with an old friend undoes that tight-stitched control. She pushes herself away from the table, straight-backed and stiff.

Zevran shrugs, digging his thumb into an orange. He opens the peel with a spray of scent, and unwraps the fruit in one long strip of peel. "Have you told her? Closed mouths don't get fed, as we say in Antiva. If she wants, or you want something—well. You can’t expect the woman to use blood magic to divine your intentions."

"I don’t know where to find her, even if I had the words to say."

"Apologies are always nice. 'I am sorry' is a classic. 'I was wrong' remains eminently popular. So gratifying for the recipient, too." He pulls the orange into segments, neatly laid on the table. "Come now, bards are famous for their words, no? And I cannot imagine anyone staying hidden from you for long."

Leliana takes a piece, biting off the tip. She chews thoughtfully.

Zevran allows the silence to settle, long enough for both of them to finish the orange and for Leliana to crack into the pistachios.

Zevran takes a blueberry tart from the tray, rolling a glazed berry across his thumb and into his mouth. "I am always one for games. Games are less frightening than sincerity." He gives her a sidelong look, nibbling the pastry. "But they can still hurt."

"For an assassin, you are remarkably unsubtle."

“I choose my targets,” he says amiably, but mercifully lets it go. They spend the rest of lunch on past prowesses and pratfalls, and end on a promise to continue their letters.

. . .

After nights of cold frustration and an empty bed, Leliana starts a series of dull, entirely safe courtships before entering a quiet resignation that resembles chastity. Safety is a sedative. Leliana may have returned to the Chantry, but she is ill-suited for peace. One can beat swords into plowshares and plowshares into swords, but the steel wears thinner each time.

Leliana is barely more than edge.

She twists Morrigan’s ring on her finger, rolls it in her palm. Presses it to her lips, pushes it in her mouth and cups it on her tongue. Wonders whether it is cure or poison for this heartsick wasting.

There is a story of lovers who meet once a year across a bridge of birds, and Leliana envies them that annual certainty. It has been three years already since she last saw Morrigan, and she prays it won’t be three years yet.

When Schmooples dies, Leliana exhausts herself so that her eyes stay dry at the funeral. Let them think her unfeeling as stone, let her show no weakness as Dorothea herself recites a blessing for the departed and they bury the small pink body under the white roses in the Divine’s private garden. Let her heart stay dry as kindling, let her mouth shape prayer as Cassandra holds her shoulder, as Cassandra makes herself a bulwark against grief.

Leliana loves Cassandra, then. Not as a lover, but as a friend. She loves her even more when Cassandra—grim-faced, dour, cheeks red and hands spattered with bright fragments of carrot—delivers her another nug, who squeaks contentedly as Cassandra presses him to Leliana’s arms. Leliana names him ‘Boulette’ and loves Cassandra dearly. They raise Boulette together, with saucers of milk and fresh produce, and when he shivers during his first Orlesian winter Cassandra painstakingly knits a tiny gray sweater for him. Leliana laughs to cover for tears, burying her face in the lumpy wool and homely craftsmanship as Cassandra stammers that it is a poor gift, of poor quality, but she could not find anything else that would fit—

Leliana takes her hand, kisses her on the cheek, and insists that it is _perfect_.

All of which means that Cassandra is the perfect babysitter when Leliana leaves on forays as Sister Nightingale, when she slips into her traveler’s leathers and carries her bow and daggers. 

Leliana tracks apostates and templars and soft whispers, the ring growing ever-warmer on her finger—sometimes it throbs and aches, the heart-rhythm of an unknown beast. Other times it is cold and inert, so Leliana cups her palms together and blows into the protected hollow of her hands, trying to press some small warmth into it, some way of letting Morrigan know that Leliana is thinking of her.

So when Morrigan finds her—or perhaps was waiting all along, as if Morrigan knew the spinning compass of her heart—it is at a humble inn in the Free Marches. Leliana had already left her belongings in her room, emerging to find her heart grow wings and flutter up her throat.

“Hello, Leliana.” Morrigan’s smile is wry, her gaze wary. She sits near the hearth with a young boy who leans against her shoulder, her hand cupped over his palm. They are a matched pair; his hair shares her dark gloss, and his brown eyes catch gold in the firelight.

Leliana’s words burn her chest, her tongue stopped with smoke, but she manages to say:

“Hello, Morrigan.” Leliana swallows. “And hello, Kieran. My, how big you’ve grown.”

“I don’t remember you,” he says, voice clear and strangely un-childlike in its certainty. Without pause, he adds, “But Mother does.”

“Does she, now?” Leliana smiles, trying not to laugh as Morrigan rolls her eyes—and yes, there is the color on Morrigan’s cheeks, the blush at being found out, but Leliana doesn't even have the heart to tease her.

All trepidation is drowned in the giddy rush of joy and relief that finally, finally the waiting is over.

Leliana learns that Morrigan and Kieran have their own room at the inn, and discovers more knowns and unknowns of her long-ago lover and child. Leliana tries teaching Kieran to snap (he cannot), to whistle (he cannot), and finally teaches him the trick of blowing across a half-filled jug so it resonates, much to Morrigan’s indignant shock and the innkeeper’s laughter. He is permitted a quarter hour of this amusement—filling and emptying the jug with different levels of water to produce different notes—before being sent to bed with milk and honey.

Leliana and Morrigan speak of much and nothing at all, like letters carefully devoid of content. Yes, Morrigan has spent some time in Serault. She still has the scarf that Leliana gave her, carefully washed so its colors stay true after all these years. Leliana in turn says, yes, she has been on business for the Divine. Yes, it is quite refreshing to be working with so many like-minded women. No, Schmooples is—

Leliana’s tongue stutters on her teeth, the words ash in her mouth. She will not lie to Morrigan, even with soft ambivalence or quiet misdirection. Gone, passed away, all are expressions of _absence_ that might yet return. Instead, she says,

“Dead.”

Morrigan’s mouth purses, her shoulders soft. Not with surprise, but with sympathy. She squeezes Leliana’s hand and orders wine for them both. She says no toast, mouths no prayer, but they clink their glasses together and drink.

Perhaps it is a burden, to expect sex to always be some expression of an infinite and abiding love, but Leliana’s heart is light as Morrigan takes her hand and asks Leliana to take her to her room. Leliana leads Morrigan down the hallway, their feet soft against the wooden floors. The very air feels warmer, softer with Morrigan’s presence, and it takes Leliana two tries to get the key in the lock of her own door, Morrigan muffling laughter into her palm. Leliana kisses Morrigan in the doorway, lets her desire be invitation rather than duty, and Morrigan melts into her, her hands grasping for Leliana’s clothes even as Leliana shuts the door behind them.

Here, Leliana gives body to all the letters she could not send. She whispers salutations (“dear, love, sweet, Morrigan”) and introduces herself to the changes writ in Morrigan’s flesh. They undress each other slowly, longingly, lingering over each new-revealed wonder. Morrigan presses her thumb in the hollow behind Leliana’s ear, laughing at the new silver in her hair. Leliana slides her fingers down Morrigan’s belly, the softness of her thighs, traces the stretch marks rippling her flesh like wishes in a fountain. Leliana licks them for good luck, laughing as Morrigan swats her for her impudence. Leliana kisses Morrigan’s thighs, her knees, caresses the soft hairs on her shins and nuzzles her way down the thin trail that leads from Morrigan’s belly to groin.

This, this is the content of all those missing letters, every soft gasp muffled in her pillow, every time she woke up alone and aching. Morrigan sits back in the bed, elbows propped against the pillows as Leliana settles between her knees. Leliana drags her tongue up Morrigan’s folds, tugs back the hood of Morrigan’s clit to give better access as she swirls and flicks her tongue. Morrigan’s sweetly acidic, her scent rich and thick as Leliana buries her nose in the coarse curls surrounding her prize. Morrigan’s thighs embrace her ears, near-painful as Leliana bends forward, engulfed in flesh and pleasure and the joy of eliciting Morrigan’s sharp moans and broken sighs. Leliana needs no alphabet tricks to remember Morrigan’s favorite patterns, the broad swirls and harder flicks of tongue, the way Leliana dips her tongue low to taste Morrigan’s core, the way Morrigan’s pleasure coats her mouth and lips until Morrigan cries, “enough, enough” and shoves Leliana’s face away with one last shudder.

“Tired already?” Leliana teases, wiping her mouth on the blanket.

Morrigan rolls her eyes, pulling herself to sit upright with her knees bent before her, limbs cupped to the side. She pats her lap. “Come here. I would like to see how you’ve touched yourself in my absence.”

Leliana crawls forward on her hands, then sits across Morrigan's lap, knees spread wide about Morrigan's hips. She leans back, one hand on Morrigan's shoulder for balance, and oh—this is a show, not like the empty nights where Leliana sought release with efficiency rather than spectacle, but there is truth too. Leliana does not pretend her pleasure, but she does take care that her breasts jut to their best advantage, that she takes time to lick her fingers, to make eye contact with Morrigan, to give her a salacious wink before she starts touching herself. One finger on each side of her clit, so she tugs with misdirection, dampened by her own body. Lazy circles, knees clasping tight, tighter, as her pleasure mounts. She bites her lip at first, until Morrigan kisses the corner of her mouth and murmurs, "sing for me, my nightingale," and then Leliana moans, little more than breath as she shuts her eyes, her world narrowing to just this room, this bed, this woman, the warmth of their bodies sliding against one another, sweat-damp and sticky and oh, and oh—

She comes hard and soft and in a thousand pieces, little jolts of pleasure tingling over her clit, her labia, her arousal smeared against the blankets, and as she melts into a halt Morrigan kisses her neck and shoulder, cups her cheeks and kisses her on the mouth.

They lie in bed together by unspoken agreement, laughing again as they ask after new scars and old stories.

"They call me Sister Nightingale, you know," Leliana chuckles, cheek pressed in Morrigan's shoulder. She blows lightly, just to stir Morrigan's loose hair.

Morrigan laughs, hard and sharp, but without cruelty. "Do they know how well you sing?"

"No one makes me sing like you," says Leliana, nibbling Morrigan's neck.

Morrigan flicks Leliana’s shoulder, chuckling as she squirms away. “Then tell me, what tales do you carry?”

And oh, there are many. Leliana is a brimming vessel, and pours herself into Morrigan’s ears. The Resolutionists have insinuated themselves among even the most loyal of Circles, Kirkwall is but one riot away from anarchy, and the Chantry is haunted by whispers of the Templars’ abuses. The Chantry cannot claim anything less than complicity, but redemption is not found in the pain of the complicit. It is in the reparation made to the victims.

Some sins are beyond forgiveness—but if they cannot be forgiven, at least they can be ceased.

“Abolish the whole mess. When your Circles are broken, there will be no rebuilding,” Morrigan sniffs, sitting up to comb her fingers through her hair.

Leliana sighs, sitting up with her. “Then who will care for the little ones, Morrigan? There are children in the Circles, and men and women who have known no other life—”

“Because they have been taken from their parents!” Morrigan snaps. “Because they have been _caged_ all their lives. You make them helpless, and then blame them for their meekness?”

“When have _you_ been so protective of those who gave up their own freedom?” Leliana asks sharply. Morrigan’s own words, hurled across the years. Leliana can admit flaws in the Chantry, but they bite more coming from someone who has never tried to work from within, who has learned nothing but barbs against what Leliana holds most dear. 

“Perhaps because I now know what it means to raise a child, who would be alone and defenseless were I not the woman I am,” Morrigan retorts. “For all Flemeth’s faults, she knew how to teach magic, and the skills to survive thereby.”

Leliana forces herself to breathe evenly, to argue calmly. “Then you admit that mages need teachers—”

“Teachers, not prisons!” Morrigan huffs. “Why do you and your Chantry keep struggling to hold them, when they love you so little?”

“I agree we need change. Our greatest sin is silence in the face of injustice,” Leliana says quietly, willing her hands to stillness, her eyes to softness. This is but Morrigan’s way, and yet—

“Then your Maker is the greatest sinner of all,” Morrigan spits.

Anger bursts Leliana’s chest, her vision spattered red. “And you love your fellow mages so much, as you chase mirrors and force _your child_ to follow?”

Too late, Leliana knows it was too far, too much—or perhaps she knew in that second before the speech, when she was breathing in, filling her lungs so she could speak the hurt. It is still easier to speak harsh words than soft kisses, to harden themselves against vulnerability.

Leliana cannot apologize, cannot force herself to acknowledge the enormity of what she has done. She breathes in, out, gulps down the scent of Morrigan’s perfume, the warmth of her hair, the rosemary of her soap.

“Don’t try to _mother_ him when you only plan to leave again,” Morrigan hisses, eyes bright and hands clawed, arching herself away from Leliana. Distance yawns between them, an aching chasm across mere inches of quilt.

“I never wanted to _be_ his mother! ‘Mother, mother, mother!’ Is that all you think you are, now?” Leliana exclaims, recoiling from Morrigan’s hand, Morrigan’s touch. More and more wrongness, words thrown like bricks through stained glass.

“Is that all _you_ think I am? Do not devalue _my_ choices merely because they are not your own.”

Leliana watches Morrigan dress in silence, in desolate calm.

There should be apologies, soft words, some way to lick their wounds and recover, to apologize—but they have never truly mastered the art of the quarrel, have only spat their words and remade themselves in a frenzy of lust and flesh. This love is a violence, spark and tinder.

Perhaps, like an unsent letter, there is no closure.

. . .

They eat breakfast together solely because the inn has only one common room. Morrigan sits next to Kieran at a long table, and after a moment of hesitancy, Leliana sits beside her. They do not acknowledge one another’s presence as Morrigan spreads butter across slabs of warm brown bread for Kieran and Leliana peels a hardboiled egg. Leliana offers the egg to Morrigan, sideways, with a tilt of her hand so her bare wrist flashes at her, all the veins swimming blue beneath the skin.

Morrigan examines the egg, and the hand that holds it. Finally she accepts, biting to expose the bright yolk.

Kieran sees much, but says little.

Finally, as Leliana pays the bill and Morrigan dabs Kieran’s chin, Leliana asks where she might send future letters.

“Orlais,” Morrigan says curtly.

“We travel the same places, then.”

“But not, I think, the same paths.”

Leliana thinks of broken mirrors and broken curses. They say it takes seven years to recover from the bad luck of shattered glass, seven years until the body remakes itself whole.

Seven years can be a lifetime.

It has been a lifetime since she touched Morrigan, and twice over since Marjolaine never touched her, now. If all those scars still bleed, it is because Leliana keeps re-opening the wounds.

‘I am sorry’ still cuts her lungs, but she would crawl on broken glass, knees torn and palms bloody, for one more chance—

“I apologize,” Leliana says, a thunderclap confession in the quiet of the room. “I would send you letters, if I may.” She bites the inside of her cheek, forces her hands still in the pillow of her lap. Leliana has deciphered others’ words long enough to know that this is an inadequate apology; she has not named the offense, she has not promised to do better, but neither has Morrigan. If they only tally arguments as an endless cycle of quarrel and apology, they may never learn what it means to stay in love for more than the course of their lovemaking.

Morrigan looks pained, mouth soft and eyes shuttered, her hand on Kieran’s arm.

“She has not yet taught me to snap my fingers, mother,” Kieran says gravely, after a long silence.

Morrigan snorts, ruffling his hair. “I can teach you that.”

“But you cannot whistle,” Kieran says, eyes large and owlish.

“I cannot teach whistling through letters,” Leliana says gently, because she is not his mother, she cannot pretend a role she cannot fill, but—

“Kieran, perhaps you should play outside,” Morrigan says. She kisses his forehead, and Leliana follows her outside the inn. The two women lean near the doorway as Kieran contents himself with daisy-chains and broken branches.

Leliana wonders what Kieran must think of this dismissal, but bites her tongue lest it be seen as criticism.

Something of it must show on Leliana’s face though, since Morrigan says, “He is a good lad. Obedient and well-mannered. He knows that I must have these conversations at times, and afterward I will answer his questions as best I may.”

“I spoke more harshly than I should have, last night,” Leliana says quietly. “To use your child in an argument was unfair.”

“I have been unfair myself,” Morrigan admits. She gives a long huff. “I cannot claim to understand your Chantry, but it is precious to you. I have been critical—”

“One can be critical—” Leliana begins at the same time.

They both stop, giving each other sidelong glances. Morrigan laughs, ducking her face so her mouth’s in her hand.

“I am a jealous lover,” Morrigan admits. “And you love your Chantry, for all its flaws. During the Blight, it was only natural that the archdemon eclipsed all other concerns. After—” Her voice breaks, her eyes rueful. “I had assumed the Chantry would eclipse all other loves, including myself.”

Leliana lets out a long sigh, shoulders slumped against the wall. “I felt the same about Kieran,” she confesses. “I am also jealous. It’s not his fault that he exists, and it’s not your fault for loving your child.”

“Necessity dictates that my role as mother overrules that of lover,” Morrigan says quietly.

Leliana swallows, her agreement a lump in her throat. She coughs into her fist, not daring to look Morrigan in the eye as she says, “And sometimes, necessity must dictate that my role within the Chantry overrules my role as lover.”

“I do not _understand_.” The confession breaks Morrigan’s lips as if unbidden, and Morrigan holds herself tight with shame.

Leliana wraps her arms around Morrigan’s shoulders, nestles Morrigan’s head against the curve of her neck. Breathes deep and rocks them together, two bodies in slow sway.

“The Chantry is flawed. It has sown division and dissent where there should be understanding. It bars entry to those with the wrong shape of ear or the wrong height. It has much to answer for, I am not denying that,” Leliana murmurs, close enough her breath stirs the fine hairs on Morrigan’s neck. “But to seek reform, one must work from within.”

“ _Can_ it be reformed?”

Leliana’s breath stops her throat, rough with heresy. One lung filled with incense, one with pyres.

Finally, she says, “If not reformed, then rebuilt.”

“I can love a woman with convictions,” Morrigan says quietly.

Leliana chuckles, kissing her ear. “I have never loved any other kind.”

Morrigan scoffs, swatting Leliana’s shoulder. “Then what else do you want, woman?”

“I want to love you as much as you’ll let me. I need to know that when we fight, we restrain ourselves. Neither the Chantry nor Kieran should be flung as weapons in our disputes.”

Morrigan lifts her chin, meeting Leliana with clear eyes. “I want to be welcome in your bed and in your arms, no matter the years and miles between us. I _need_ to know that no matter what other choices we make, my choices in raising Kieran are not yours to criticize.”

“And I need to know that when you criticize the Chantry, you criticize my actions and not my faith,” Leliana says, taking Morrigan’s hands in her own and raising them to her lips. She kisses them tenderly, across the knuckles, and keeps them to her mouth as she speaks. “I am not making excuses for their failures. But I also see the good that _can_ come from it.”

“It has shaped you,” Morrigan murmurs. “I may never love the Chantry, but you are one of the few goods that _has_ come from it.”

“Does this mean I’ll see you in the Grand Cathedral, next—?” Leliana laughs as Morrigan swats her.

Morrigan rolls her eyes, pinching Leliana’s arm. “It means that I will send you letters.” She smiles, and Leliana’s heart stutters. This will not be their final argument, nor their final reconciliation. “You shall have a return address, once I myself know where we are.”

. . .

Morrigan’s letters arrive like stumbled poetry, and Leliana reads and rereads them by moonlight, starlight, candle and full sun, as if each new source might illuminate fresh meaning, as if there are hidden runes that can only activate by light and season. Leliana continues her correspondence with others, of course—she relishes Zevran’s quips and sly intel, and resumes an old friendship with the Antivan ambassador. When Tabris is no longer reachable (but oh, was she ever?) Leliana scours her contacts and informs Morrigan, equal parts commiseration and plea. _Our old friend is missing, have you heard? If you have any comfort, any counsel, I would be most appreciative_ …

Leliana's world revolves around the Divine and her duties, her haven amidst the firestorm of the Kirkwall debacle. Leliana cannot truly blame the mages, when it is so much easier to blame herself for not having done more, the Grand Cleric for having stayed neutral, or any of the things unsaid or steps untaken that could have led to any other path…

Morrigan's letters pry, they probe, they question. Maddening and infuriating, but welcome. At least Leliana has one old friend amidst the chaos, one who still gives sly goads and prods her for her faith.

With all that history, it is no wonder that after it all—after the eruption at Haven, after the sky tore like cheap paper, after more whispers and rumors and the dismayed realization that Leliana has spilled more blood than wine, that her own servants have become long familiar at distinguishing the stains—when Leliana finds herself in Halamshiral once more, watching the dancers and their footwear and discreetly using Cullen as bait for the more forward of the nobles so she might eavesdrop, that there is no shock when Leliana finally sees Morrigan descend the stairway.

Morrigan always knew how to make an entrance. Her gown sweeps behind her with a practiced ease, her eyes bright and her lips curled in a dangerous smile. The dress is lovely, sumptuous in its elegance, and Leliana aches to finger the long creases, to stroke the velvet where it brushes Morrigan’s skin.

Her eyes meet Morrigan’s.

Leliana makes her excuses, and leaves for a secluded balcony.

It is not truly private, not with so many ears and eyes nearby, but it will do for this small reunion.

They slip into conversation as if they had only paused and never stopped. Morrigan is a medicine; cure and poison are a matter of degree. Leliana may only take her in sips small enough to numb the pain of her absence, but she misses her, and missed her, and is still missing her.

Perhaps this time, after ten years and more mistakes than either dare admit, they might finally get it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire fic started as an excuse to write tentacle-smut. There, I said it. I love tentacles, I love femslash, I think it is tragic that there are so few fics that combine them. 16k words later, you can tell this got away from me!
> 
> The line about the art of the quarrel is a nod to [a few steps short of poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3655125) by paperiuni, featuring Josephine/Cassandra.

**Author's Note:**

> Have you read the fantastic [Wintersend Exchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wintersendexchange), as featured in the Randy Dowager? It also features lovely art, much better than ‘cheap woodcuts.’ ;)


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